When creating both Hyde & Zeke as well as Shoot for the Stars, we knew storytelling would be an important aspect for these games. In addition to the visual novel sections in Shoot for the Stars we have “event scenes” inspired by the storyboard sequences we used in Hyde & Zeke.
These scenes will be used for important moments throughout the game’s story to emphasize certain scenes. After we established the main outline for the game, we went back and elaborated on the script for the demo. We read through our script a second time and highlighted certain moments we felt needed “something extra” to showcase the importance of any individual scene.
The beginning of the game is a fine example of the usage of these scenes. The beginning starts off in a very poetic manner, introducing us to the main cast of Shoot for the Stars. We knew we wanted each character to start by their homes and originally wanted them walking to school. Before we came up with the idea for the scenes, we were originally considering their sprites walking to school, but we felt that would not be as powerful as the more detailed event scenes during these sequences.
We generally start with a concept of what the locations look like with a rough coloring of a location. Then, we go into Blender and block out a rough of the scene to help position the desired perspective. We then use that background and finalize any detailed linework and coloring needed for the characters and the background itself in Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint. Lastly, to add a final level of “pizazz” we gave some subtle animation to the scenes in Spine.
Lastly, Since the game includes 2 variants of "Sky" we took extra consideration with the event scenes in the game. If a "scene" includes Sky in the scene, depending on which Sky chosen, they will appear as part of the scene.
These scenes will even be seen quite a bit throughout the demo, so look forward to some dynamic storytelling! Next week, we’ll be returning to the battlefield once again and this time we will be discussing the hover elements that are seen on the cards. Thank you once again for reading our devlogs and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter for all the latest updates. See you next time TerraZone fans!